History Main / InsaneAdmiral

* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'': ''Literature/ShardsOfHonor'' features Vice-Admiral Ges Vorrutyer, who combines dangerous military adventurism with a brutally manipulative attitude to his companions' lives, and in his spare time is a serial rapist. General Metzov is so obsessed with people respecting his authority that he dragoons trainees who aren't even in his chain of command to supervise the torture/murder of subordinates for refusing to enter a biohazard zone to try to recover spilled chemical weapons when they can be safely destroyed without endangering anyone's lives.

** ''Literature/StarTrekCoda'': [[spoiler William Riker]] becomes this, fanatically pursuing Picard owing to the effects of temporal psychosis.

** ''Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations'' has a downplayed version with Admiral Roger Delgado, who is ''very'' obsessive about working out how time travel works, believing it's BecauseDestinySaysSo. Fortunately, he never goes too far, but once it's clear he's nearly pissed off an incredibly advanced race with his antics, he takes the blame and is quietly retired.

** ''Literature/StarTrekCoda'': In the [[AlternateTimeline First Splinter Timeline]] previously ReasonableAuthorityFigure William Ross was one of the main organic operatives of Section 31 until his arrest and death at the hands of a surviving spouse of one of the Section's victims.

*** Admiral Clancy is presented as this, [[ZigZaggedTrope but turns out to be an aversion.]] When a retired Admiral who left Starfleet under less-than-amicable terms comes to her office with a far-fetched story about Romulan spies and the daughter of his long-dead android crewmate, presumptuously requesting his old job back so he can go on his personal quest despite having no concrete evidence to justify doing so, ''only days after shit-talking Starfleet on the news'', she [[ShutUpKirk understandably shuts him down]]. And [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure then contacts the head of Starfleet Security to start an official investigation of Picard's claims]], out of "[[ProperlyParanoid an excess of caution]]". [[spoiler:She had no way of guessing that the head of Starfleet Security, Commodore Oh, was not only a Romulan spy but an AI-hating fanatic who was willing to hamper an evacuation of ''her own homeworld'' to prevent robots from being built. When Picard contacts her again later with considerably more evidence for his claims, Clancy readily [[TheCavalry dispatches a squadron of ships to help him]], telling him this in the same breath she tells him to shut the fuck up.]]

* Admiral Greyfield (Sigismundo in the Europe version) in ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars: Days of Ruin]]''. Hoo boy, name a [[GeneralFailure blunder]] or atrocity and he's probably done it. He hoards supplies, [[WhileRomeBurns lives luxuriously]] (and this even [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration extends to his CO power]] which dumps excess supplies on his units), [[FantasticRacism jingoistically treats his enemies like animals,]] treats his own men as [[WeHaveReserves expendable]] and [[YouHaveFailedMe threatens to have them hanged]] at the slightest infraction ("I'll see you hanged for this!" is even his {{Catchphrase}}), at [[AfterTheEnd a time when both resources and human lives are precious]]. [[TheNeidermeyer The only reason the heroes even put up with him]] is because they want to end the war with Lazuria as soon as possible to minimize bloodshed (a concern Greyfield [[GeneralRipper doesn't share]]). Greyfield then [[TheMillstone actively sabotages Brenner's Wolves]] in one mission when they start to upstage him by [[ScrappyMechanic prohibiting the use of random unit classes every turn]] (which can completely shut down your strategy if your forces aren't diverse enough). We'd go on, but he only gets worse from there and a full account of his crimes would cover half the page in spoilers.

* ''Series/MissionImpossible'': In "Submarine" from the remake series, the IMF have to stop a U.S. Navy admiral who sank one of his own subs as a demonstration of a weapons system he was planning to sell on the black market. He did this because he felt betrayed by the government conducting weapon limitation talks with the Russians, which stopped his computer virus attack system from ever going into production.

* ''Series/MissionImpossible'': In "Submarine", the IMF have to stop a U.S. Navy admiral who sank one of his own subs as a demonstration of a weapons system he was planning to sell on the black market. He did this because he felt betrayed by the government conducting weapon limitation talks with the Russians, which stopped his computer virus attack system from ever going into production.

*** A more straight example is Patar, a logic extremist[[note]]basically the Vulcan equivalent of, at best, a UKIP supporter[[/note]] who heads Section 31 and is adamant that Spock be captured, no matter the evidence that he did not commit murder escaping from Starbase 5. [[spoiler:However, it later turns out that Control, the AI that Section 31 uses for decision making, murdered Section 31 High Command, including Patar, because [[AIIsACrapshoot it had developed a Skynet complex]], so perhaps the real Patar wasn't ''quite'' as insane as Control's puppet.]]

** Lampshaded by Lt. Cmdr. Ron Docent in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" when he claims that the admiral he knows is a psycho.
** [[spoiler:Admiral Buenamigo]] turns out to be this, willing to risk lives and ultimately commit mass murder for the sake of getting a pet project off the ground. [[spoiler:Said pet project is a class of automated starship with a [[AIIsACrapshoot flaw in the AI]] that predisposes any given vessel of the class to going AxCrazy due to [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters daddy issues]], which ends up causing both his death and the deaths of numerous other personnel on Douglas Station, the ''Van Citters'', and the ''Cerritos''.]] It turns out the reason Starfleet admirals are so prone to this (filling up half the folders on this page) is the competitive atmosphere at Starfleet [=HQ=] -- once these Admirals are [[DeskJockey stuck behind a desk]], they have to do something big to stand out from the crowd, leading to these ill-advised ventures.

* Admiral Akainu in ''Manga/OnePiece''. Among other things, he destroys a boatload of civilians because one scholar might have slipped on board, he's shown interest in buying and using the incredibly deadly weapons created by Caesar Clown in spite of the fact that they render entire islands uninhabitable, and forcing the soldiers at Marineford to keep fighting at the cost of their lives, even though their main objective had already been completed. [[spoiler:And then, to make it worse, he ends up working his way into the position of Fleet Admiral, meaning he's in charge of the entire Navy.]]

[[caption-width-right:350: Let's hope those are two rags and not one.]]

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}: Szuriel, Horseman of War, and Angel of Desolation is what happens when you combine the worst traits of a GeneralRipper and a ColonelKilgore with PsychoForHire, WeHaveReserves, WarGod, and DemonLordsAndArchdevils. It isn't pretty.

** ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'': While Katrina Cornwell thankfully isn't quite this, she does get dangerously close to this territory when the Federation is on the brink of defeat and she approves the mission to bomb Qo'noS into oblivion, only seeing sense when Burnham points out that abandoning Starfleet principles for the sake of survival was the exact mistake ''she'' made when she committed mutiny. A more straight example is Patar, a logic extremist[[note]]basically the Vulcan equivalent of, at best, a UKIP supporter[[/note]] who heads Section 31 and is adamant that Spock be captured, no matter the evidence that he did not commit murder escaping from Starbase 5. [[spoiler:However, it later turns out that Control, the AI that Section 31 uses for decision making, murdered Section 31 High Command, including Patar, because [[AIIsACrapshoot it had developed a Skynet complex]], so perhaps the real Patar wasn't ''quite'' as insane as Control's puppet.]]

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Gettysburg", Colonel Angus Devine is suffering from severe viral meningitis, which causes his behavior to become increasingly unstable as the Battle of Gettysburg progresses.

*** "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine}} The Doomsday Machine]]" - Commodore Matt Decker is driven mad after watching the titular machine kill his entire crew, and commandeers the Enterprise in a vain attempt to destroy it. When that proves unsuccessful, he commits suicide, flying a shuttlecraft into it. That was an attempted TakingYouWithMe though.
*** "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E23TheOmegaGlory}} The Omega Glory]] - Captain Tracey of the USS ''Exeter'' violates the prime directive and helps kill a great many Kohms after losing his entire crew and believing he found the fountain of youth on Omega IV. Prior to finding the ''Exeter'' Kirk remarks that Tracey is one of the most experienced officer in the fleet. It was not established if Tracey was always unstable or if the trauma of losing his entire crew pushed him over the edge.
*** "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS2E12TheDeadlyYears}} The Deadly Years]]" - With Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise senior staff incapacitated, Commodore Stocker (who wears a red shirt, indicating he's a flag officer from the ''operations'' division) takes command of the ''Enterprise'', despite explicitly having no command experience whatsoever, and orders the ship into the Romulan Neutral Zone, in violation of treaty and against Starfleet regulations. The Romulans immediately attack the ''Enterprise'', to the surprise of nobody but himself; Sulu, Uhura, and even ''Chekov'' (a greenhorn ensign who's only been on the bridge for half a season) all express incredulity at his complete inability to comprehend the situation, indicating that any of them would have done better at the conn than he did.
*** "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS3E14WhomGodsDestroy}} Whom Gods Destroy]]" - Garth of Izar, a former Starfleet Fleet Captain who develops megalomania and becomes a GalacticConqueror! Wound up in an asylum on Elba II.

--->'''[[http://docohobigfinish.blogspot.com/2014/08/tng-season-five.html Joe Ford]]''': As soon as Admiral Brackett beams onto the ''Enterprise'', Picard should clap her in irons. I don’t think he’s ever met an Admiral that isn’t corrupt in some way and he should nip her plans in the bud before she has a chance to put them in motion. Oh... she’s as innocent as she seems? Egg on my face.
*** Admiral Jameson violated the PrimeDirective by providing weapons to the leader of one side of a war in exchange for the Federation hostages he was holding, only to provide weapons to the other side in an attempt to maintain the balance of power. Granted, he was only a captain at the time, but decades later, the now-retired and infirm admiral takes a massive overdose of a de-aging drug in order to be strong enough to face his former adversary again, in what turns out to be a revenge plot against Jameson for having helped perpetuate that war.
*** Retired Admiral Norah Satie ruthlessly investigates the crew of the ''Enterprise''-D, believing that there is a traitor among them. When her investigation proves fruitless, she becomes rather unhinged, causing the saner admiral presiding over the events to excuse himself immediately and halt the investigation.
*** Admiral Kennelly conspires with Cardassians to attempt an assassination of a Bajoran terrorist, blind to the fact that there was no way the man could have committed the crime he is accused of.
*** Admiral Pressman conducted secret, dangerous, and illegal tests involving a Federation cloaking device and lied to other officers about it. Like Jameson, he was a captain at the time of the initial tests, but as an admiral, he wants to start them up again. (He happens to be the admiral that Ron Moore is talking about in the page quote above.) Although it's worth noting that [[StrawmanHasAPoint he did have a point]] about the Treaty of Algeron (which let the Romulans keep their cloaking devices while the Federation gave the technology up) putting Starfleet at a serious disadvantage.
*** ''TNG'' has one shining aversion in the shape of Admiral Nechayev, who is a warhawk who will [[IDidWhatIHadToDo do what it takes]] to ensure Federation security. However, coming from that baseline all her actions make sense, and plot-wise she functions more as DaChief to Picard's CowboyCop than anything else.

*** Admiral Leyton convinces the Federation President to declare martial law on Earth, carefully maneuvering his way into launching a coup. He is the KnightTemplar GeneralRipper type. This even includes setting up two starships to fight each other to keep one of them from exposing him and his plans.
*** {{Subverted}} by Admiral Nechayev, who agrees to insane concessions as part of a Dominion peace treaty that would make the Federation a ''de facto'' Dominion client state, in exchange for Dominion help in staving off (read: wiping out) the Romulans. [[spoiler:It turns out this is part of a Dominion simulation to see how far the [=DS9=] crew would go to oppose such an arrangement. Turns out, pretty far.]] In her only other [[spoiler:(as in, real)]] appearance on [=DS9=], she's at worst clueless regarding the scope of the Maquis objections to the Federation's dealings with the Cardassians.

** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': Even future Admiral Janeway gets into this in the GrandFinale, pulling an extremely risky, not to mention highly illegal, bit of history-rewriting to ensure everyone gets home. Then again, thanks to [[DependingOnTheWriter inconsistent writing]], there were already certain ''questions'' about Janeway's stability.

** Hela from ''Film/ThorRagnarok'', who kills nearly everyone who tries to oppose her [[spoiler: including the entire army she wanted to lead.]] By the time the film ends, Asgard's population is reduced to [[spoiler: a couple hundred civilian refugees,]] all because she couldn't accept that they didn't want her as their queen.

* ''Literature/Area51'': General Gullick, Area 51's commanding officer in the first book, at first just seems like a very harsh, straight-edged military man involved with nefarious dealings. However, we see increasingly that he's not just bad, but mentally unstable, and grows more so as the novel goes on. [[spoiler: It's shown to be a result of the alien computer affecting him. He dies at the end when it's destroyed.]]

* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Bass Monroe is an unhinged military dictator of the Monroe Republic (formerly the northeastern US and parts of Canada). As the show goes on, it becomes a DeconstructedTrope, with loyal officers [[spoiler: Mile Matheson (revealed to have been one in [[Recap/RevolutionS1E3NoQuarter No Quarter]]) and Tom Neville (occurred in [[Recap/RevolutionS1E13TheSongRemainsTheSame The Song Remains the Same]])]] betraying him, because he would have had them killed. His paranoia and insanity cause a lot of competent officers to be killed off, including [[spoiler: Colonel John Faber ([[Recap/RevolutionS1E8TiesThatBind Ties That Bind]]), a militia captain who worked under Neville ([[Recap/RevolutionS1E14TheNightTheLightsWentOutInGeorgia The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia]]), and Jeremy Baker]], who calls him out on his behaviour before his death in [[Recap/RevolutionS1E17TheLongestDay The Longest Day]]. In fact, by the [[Recap/RevolutionS1E20TheDarkTower The Dark Tower]], [[spoiler: Tom Neville takes over the Monroe Republic and Bass Monroe is left to run off on his own]].

*** ''TNG'' has one shining aversion in the shape of Admiral Nechayev, who is a warhawk who is [[IDidWhatIHadToDo do what it takes]] to ensure Federation security. However, coming from that baseline all her actions make sense, and plot-wise she functions more as DaChief to Picard's CowboyCop than anything else.

*** {{Subverted}} by Admiral Nechayev, who agrees to insane concessions as part of a Dominion peace treaty that would make the Federation a ''de facto'' Dominion client state, in exchange for Dominion help in staving off (read: wiping out) the Romulans. [[spoiler: It turns out this is part of a Dominion simulation to see how far the [=DS9=] crew would go to oppose such an arrangement. Turns out, pretty far.]] In her only other [[spoiler:(as in, real)]] appearance on [=DS9=], she's at worst clueless regarding the scope of the Maquis objections to the Federation's dealings with the Cardassians.
*** Admiral William Ross in the later seasons presents Starfleet's brass in a better light. As a big part of the Dominion War Arc, he practically becomes part of the Deep Space Nine crew, and the audience gets to know and trust him. And yet, even Ross is not above [[spoiler: collaborating with Section 31, a quasi-legal black ops organization that defends the Federation by betraying everything it claims to hold dear, though he's clearly ''not'' happy about it and is only doing so because he's tired of watching people die in the war]].

*** Admiral Clancy is presented as this, [[ZigZaggedTrope but turns out to be an aversion.]] When a retired Admiral who left Starfleet under less-than-amicable terms comes to her office with a far-fetched story about Romulan spies and the daughter of his long-dead android crewmate, presumptuously requesting his old job back so he can go on his personal quest despite having no concrete evidence to justify doing so, ''only days after shit-talking Starfleet on the news'', she [[ShutUpKirk understandably shuts him down]]. And [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure then contacts the head of Starfleet Security to start an official investigation of Picard's claims]], out of "[[ProperlyParanoid an excess of caution]]". [[spoiler: She had no way of guessing that the head of Starfleet Security, Commodore Oh, was not only a Romulan spy but an AI-hating fanatic who was willing to hamper an evacuation of ''her own homeworld'' to prevent robots from being built. When Picard contacts her again later with considerably more evidence for his claims, Clancy readily [[TheCavalry dispatches a squadron of ships to help him]], telling him this in the same breath she tells him to shut the fuck up.]]

** How bad is it? [[spoiler: In one route, they literally end up causing the EXTINCTIONS OF THE QUARIAN RACE...through declaring war against the Geth, who would have surrendered if they literally had just asked.]]

%%** Admiral Zelle [[spoiler: Undine Infiltrator]], Romulan Colonel Hakeev, and Chancellor J'mpok of the KDF.

** [[spoiler: Admiral Buenamigo]] turns out to be this, willing to risk lives and ultimately commit mass murder for the sake of getting a pet project off the ground. [[spoiler:Said pet project is a class of automated starship with a [[AIIsACrapshoot flaw in the AI]] that predisposes any given vessel of the class to going AxCrazy due to [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters daddy issues]], which ends up causing both his death and the deaths of numerous other personnel on Douglas Station, the ''Van Citters'', and the ''Cerritos''.]] It turns out the reason Starfleet admirals are so prone to this (filling up half the folders on this page) is the competitive atmosphere at Starfleet [=HQ=] -- once these Admirals are [[DeskJockey stuck behind a desk]], they have to do something big to stand out from the crowd, leading to these ill-advised ventures.
* General Pong Krell in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' always chose the most straightforward, violent approach, resulting in massive casualties and [[ControlFreak was a ruthlessly controlling leader who refused to take the advice of his subordinates into consideration]], even threatening Fives with his lightsaber for questioning his orders. [[spoiler: It's revealed towards the end of the arc that he had become a [[DarkSide Dark Jedi]] and was planning to lose the battle and join the Separatists, but it's mentioned early on that he had a ''long'' history of high clone casualty rates and many victories for the Republic leaving it unclear whether he had been planning to defect for that long or he was just that bad of a tactician]].

* Creator/MarvelComics gives us General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, whose obsession with capturing the Hulk endangers civilians and, regardless of how reasonable the end result may be, is nothing short of insane.

** Admiral Rittenhouse in the ''Star Trek'' [[Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse novel]], ''[[Literature/FortunesOfWar Dreadnought!]]''. He commissioned the titular warship and named it Star Empire, and if that doesn't tell you where he stood on things, nothing will. His goal was to protect the Federation from its enemies was to overthrow the civilian government and establish a military dictatorship. It was so bad for Starfleet's reputation, that a later novel by the same author used it as a major reason Kirk was more or less forced to accept promotion to Admiral as he was something of a living legend by the end of the five-year mission.

%%* Website/SFDebris treats Kathryn Janeway of the USS ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' as a supervillain while she's only a captain, but in his review of ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', she gets the full treatment, with a nearly three-minute [[https://youtu.be/q0lZytCblEE?t=1m9s monologue]] detailing how the entire plot of the movie including half the {{plot hole}}s was a part of her plan to take over the entire Alpha Quadrant.

** ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'': Several Federation and Klingon brass conspired to assassinate each other's heads of government.
** ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': Admiral Dougherty is conspiring with an enemy power to remove an indigenous population from its homeworld in order to gain access to valuable resources. Possibly a subversion, since he was acting under direct orders from the Federation Council and tried to back out when things turned nasty.

*** Admiral Leyton convinces the Federation President to declare martial law on Earth, carefully maneuvering his way into launching a coup. He is the KnightTemplar GeneralRipper type. This even includes setting up two starships to fight each other to keep one of them from exposing him

** [[spoiler: Admiral Buenamigo]] turns out to be this, willing to risk lives and ultimately commit mass murder for the sake of getting a pet project off the ground. [[spoiler:Said pet project is a class of automated starship with a [[AIIsACrapshoot flaw in the AI]] that predisposes any given vessel of the class to going AxCrazy due to [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters daddy issues]], which ends up causing both his death and the deaths of numerous other personnel on Douglas Station, the ''Van Citters'', and the ''Cerritos''.]] It turns out the reason Starfleet admirals are so prone to this (see above for other entries in the franchise) is the competitive atmosphere at Starfleet [=HQ=] -- they have to do something big to stand out from the crowd, leading to these ill-advised ventures.

&& Neither of these have context

&&** We also have a case with Admiral T'Nae, though she typically makes up for it by being right.

** [[spoiler: Admiral Buenamigo]] turns out to be this, willing to risk lives and ultimately commit mass murder for the sake of getting a pet project off the ground. [[spoiler:Said pet project is a class of automated starship with a [[AIIsACrapshoot flaw in the AI]] that predisposes any given vessel of the class to going AxCrazy due to [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters daddy issues]], which ends up causing both his death and the deaths of several other Douglas Station personnel.]] It turns out the reason Starfleet admirals are so prone to this (see above for other entries in the franchise) is the competitive atmosphere at Starfleet [=HQ=] -- they have to do something big to stand out from the crowd, leading to these ill-advised ventures.

%%* General Bowe in the ''Wiki/SCPFoundation''.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Queeg Captain Queeg]] in ''Literature/TheCaineMutiny'', both the original novel and the FilmOfTheBook. His bizarre behavior eventually causes a subordinate to relieve him of command.

* Some of the admirals in ''LightNovel/CrestOfTheStars'' are a little off their rockers. Specifically, there's Admiral Spoor, who rejoices in the nickname "The Lady of Chaos", and Admiral Bibauth, who desperately tries to distance himself from the family nickname "The Beautiful Madness" and in the process makes himself look even worse. They are fortunately both fairly competent and aided by competent subordinates but definitely considered rather eccentric.

%%* Anyone with the rank of Colonel or above in ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo''

** [[spoiler: Admiral Buenamigo]] turns out to be this, willing to risk lives and ultimately commit mass murder for the sake of getting a pet project off the ground. It turns out the reason Starfleet admirals are so prone to this (see above for other entries in the franchise) is the competitive atmosphere at Starfleet [=HQ=] -- they have to do something big to stand out from the crowd, leading to these ill-advised ventures.

* The ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' episode "[[Recap/StevenUniverseS5E11LarsOfTheStars Lars of the Stars]]" features the [[EvilIsHammy hammy]] Homeworld space fleet Gem commander Emerald, who's repeatedly outwitted by [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits the Off Colors]] and refuses to shoot down her stolen ship because [[CompanionCube it's her "best friend"]].